Concept
Thanks for stopping by.
Dream Dial is a dream-catcher project originally built for the 2020
Portland Winter Light Festival that hopes to connect dreamers with those in need of inspiration, a joke, or just a touch of human connection.
Coincidentally, that installation was in February 2020, which as you may recall was just before COVID-19. I put the project away for years, but decided to pull it out specifically for
Teardown 2025. It now serves as both an installation for that event, as well as a sort of time capsule of the optimistic time just before the pandemic, when 2020 was still young and full of possibility.
Some of the stories are from that time, and some are new and from this conference. I hope that you enjoy perusing the thoughts and dreams shared by others.
Build
Before Dream Dial, I had built one installation before,
ChroMAKEy (an eight-foot electronic xylophone), and wanted to improve on my build techniques as well as portability. Other than originally being mounted on a heavy pedestal, it is unchanged physically from the original.
Since this is a hardware hacking conference, some info on the particulars of the build:
- Dimensional lumber, MDF, ABS, and acrylic
- 1980s executive desk telephone
- Epson TM-T88IV POS receipt printer
- Adafruit WS2801 30mm LED "dots"
- Raspberry Pi 3B+ running balenaOS
- Custom Python firmware (Pygame, PyAudio, NumPy, ESC/POS)
The Balena system in particular allows this to act as a fault-tolerant appliance, with both a robust and largely read-only Linux installation as well as easily reparable or swappable brains should some physical damage occur.
As far as how it works, audio is sent through the original handset microphone and speaker wires to a USB audio device. Recordings light up a VU meter in realtime. The keypad works like a fairly standard 4x3 matrix on 7 GPIO pins and the receiver cradle also has a momentary switch. Stories are saved to disk as WAV files. The receipt printout encodes the story details into a URL that the website parses to present custom information. The installation is completely offline. Moderation of stories is done at the kiosk itself through an audio-based admin menu. Inside is a small power strip into which are plugged the Pi, the LED power supply, and the printer, such that everything is powered on once the single external cord is plugged into the wall.
Hacking
If you'd like to talk shop or brainstorm future ideas for things to do with this concept or installation, feel free to get in touch at the links above or find me around the conference this weekend. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!
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JM